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Chavez Donates Oil to America’s Poor

My Father watches Fox News, so I’m pretty clear on the miserable slant to their reporting. I have to say, however, that I was a bit surprised to find that despite his hours in front of the Republican Propaganda channel, he had never heard anything about Hugo Chavez offering to donate oil to America’s poor in Boston and New York. I guess that just goes to show how Rupert Murdoch’s politics corrupt the reporting on this “news” channel.

My father didn’t even believe me when I mentioned it to him. Well, here is a section from an interview with Chavez where he speaks about his offer to the US. Is it just me, or is it a little strange that the richest, most powerful country in the world is somehow unable to help its own people pay for heat, but the leader of a small nation like Venezuela can? Apparently New York is happily accepting the offer.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Mr. President, welcome. Bien venido a los Estados Unidos. Your democratic revolution has a different aspect to it, in that your rich in oil, and the world badly needs oil. What do you do in Latin America to use oil as a weapon to assist the poor. Can you tell us a little more about what you are offering to the communities of the United States who are also suffering from high oil prices.

PRESIDENT HUGO CHAVEZ: This is the result of our awareness, that only through integration we can advance and we can progress among Latin American countries, breaking the paradigm of capitalism, of free trade, and neo-liberalism. In the year 2000, we started a cooperation program especially with the Caribbean and Central American countries, and some of the South American countries, with the Caracas Energy Accord, and there for the first time in history we included Cuba, because Cuba is considered like a country that is not part the Americas, and we think it is part of the Americas; Jamaica, nicaragua, grenada, many countries.

This mechanism includes the sale of oil and oil by-products with a discount of up to 25 percent. This discount becomes in the end a donation we give these countries, however, when the price of oil, starts increases, in the year 2000 we signed the Caracas Accord and the price at that time was 20, 25 dollars a barrel. When we realized that the prices started to increase and it goes beyond 40 and beyond 50, and I doubt very much the price is going to drop any time soon because this is part of the structural crisis, the world has to face it, it is a reality. There is a drop in the oil reserves, there is an increase in consumption and demand. The refining capacity is low.

The consumerism of the world is unbearable. The world of the U.S. people must come to understand, how this country with 5 percent of the world population only, consumes 25 percent of the oil and the energy of the world. I mean that type of consumption is totally unbearable and this planet cannot stand it any more. When we realized that the price of oil went up beyond 50 dollars, we initiated another cooperation scheme. We have created, therefore, Petrocaribe and we are going to start with small Caribbean and Caricom countries, and the larger Antillas such as Cuba, Jamaica, and Dominican Republic.

So weâ€™re now providing, first weâ€™re ensuring the supply of oil, direct supply of oil from state to state, in order to avoid the speculation of multinationals and traders. They buy gasoline in Venezuela and then they go to a Caribbean country, and they charge double so we are selling the products to the states directly. We are not charging for freight, we assume the cost of freight. But apart from that, this discount is not of 25 percent it goes to 40 percent of the total, and this money will be paid back in 25 years time, with 2 years of grace and 1 percent interest rates. So if you make all of the mathematical calculations, the donation percentage is almost 70 percent because itâ€™s a long term adjusted 1 percent. So what Venezuelaâ€™s doing is supplying 200,000 barrels of oil to the Caribbean and other Central American and South American countries such as Paraguay, Uruguay and smaller nations in South America. 200, 000 millions of barrels, if you apply calculations, mathematical calculations by 1.5 percent of our GDP, 1.5 percent of the GDP is devoted to this cooperation. It means we are financing these sister nations that next year will reach 1.7 billion dollars a year, in 10 years is 17 billion dollars. Itâ€™s a way for us to share, to share our resources with these countries.

And what about the us population? Well after many meetings with the U.S. citizens, we decided to propose a scheme for poor populations and low-income populations in the us. Weâ€™ve seen that poverty in the us is growing everywhere. Itâ€™s close to 11 percent poverty according to some estimates and instead of the figures you have to go deeper into it because if you see Katrina, and you saw whatâ€™s happened, 100,000 people were abandoned and they are abandoned, and theyâ€™re just surviving.

So here we have CITGO, this oil company. We have the CITGO company here in the United States. This is a Venezuelan company, so letâ€™s have a look at the U.S. map the distribution area of CITGO in the U.S. We are present in 14,000 gas stations in the U.S., and here we have a different refineries, asphalt refineries, eight refineries that we have in the U.S., the plants for filling units, the third, refineries, terminals, and so on.

We want to use these infrastructures to help the poor populations. We have made some progress. We have given instructions to the president of CITGO, Felix Rodriguez. We want that up to 10 percent we refine here. We supply every day to the us 1.5 million barrels of oil, crude and product and we refine, here, close to 800,000 barrels a day refined here in the us. So we would like to take 10 percent of what we refine those products and to offer these products in several modalities to the poor populations. And the pilot project will be starting in Chicago we are already operating in Chicago. Well letâ€™s hope that thereâ€™s not going to be any obstacle by the government opposed to this project being implemented, but we will be working in those poor populations. We have some allies, local partners and we have a number of communities, and we are going to donate some heating oil, because the winter is close, and for the school transportation to school, for the Mexican neighborhood which is the largest in Chicago, La Villita, is the name of this neighborhood with close to 900,000 inhabitants, and so there are other neighborhoods with Hispanics and Latinos. October, the 14th weâ€™re going to start with these pilot projects with small communities and schools, but there are other pilot projects that will start in November in Boston, and here in New York.

So different modalities, with local authorities, mayors, organized communities, religious groups. So we are very pleased to announce this. And to help just with a drop, and a grain of contribution to help these low-income populations, Blacks or Hispanics or also White population so weâ€™re just starting with this project.

14 thoughts on “Chavez Donates Oil to America’s Poor”

Chavez is a COMMUNIST. End of story. It is obvious that this is nothing more than attempt to gain the loyalty of the poor towards the Communist goal of world-domination. And we all know what happens when the Commies try to start doing that.

Chavez is acting under the premise that by dividing his foes, he will win… Its not compassion. In Venezuela 80% or more of its population lives under poverty levels. Around 20% are unemployed, 60% percent are self-employed and do not qualify for any help from Social Security. Around 60% of Venezuelians eat twice a day only. More than 80% of Venezuelians earn less than $200 monthly… People in Venezuela survive each day, they don’t live.
Around 60 people are murdered each day in Venezuela, far more people than the dead in Irak; there are hundreds of other crimes not reported… rapes, robberies, scams…
So, if you think ChÃ¡vez is good because he helps some of the poor in the US, I would like you to come visit Venezuela and live under the Venezuelian’s poor conditions. Then you will learn that ChÃ¡vez is an evil manipulator that wants to divide americans and create a deep division so that the “Empire” as Chavez calls it falls. Chavez help to the US is as bad intentioned as any help that Castro could offer, or Hussein, North Korea, Iran…
By praising Chavez you are hurting Venezuela, the US (not Bush), and democracy around the world. Please. don’t do it.

Chavez is not some saint; like any politician he is an opportunist. But you cannot seriously suggest that Chavez is responsible for the violence that has plagued Venezuela (and most of Latin America) for the last century. Communism, Socialism, Bolivarianism; whatever you want to call it, it exists as a response to the inadequate conditions under capitalism. First-world living standards have risen through the exportation of the exploitive conditions of unregulated capitalism. Sadly, we may never see the day when a working person in any country can provide for his or her own basic needs. If I’m a communist for wanting no one to starve to death, so be it. Capitalism should work for the people who work under it.

Normally I don’t comment on comments, but Mike… I LOVE it when you write on my blog! You always manage to write pretty much what I am thinking, but in a way that is much more reasonable than I could ever write it… For some reason I always seem to write in an inflamitory tone, but you have that voice-of-reason thing dialed! Thanks for the great comments.

shoelimpy? are you kidding? so WHAT if he’s a communist. i can only hope your comment is dripping with sarcasm. have we all forgotten that we went to vietnam under the pretense of stopping the dangerous spread of communism? then we lost thousands of american soldiers lives and went home with our tail between our legs and communism never spread past vietnam, and it’s STILL a communist country and doesn’t pose a threat to us in the least. all you idiots who are scared of communism are weak-minded fools controlled by fear and can be made to do whatever the government wants as long as you believe there’s some threat looming over us.

you are talking about gross domestic product for one and what the fuck does that have to do with oil it fucking doesnt cause for one point i dont see any change in Americas economy…. so Bush cant do shit cause he is some little bitch president and cant take fucking control. we need to fucking change the world and you are talking about 1.5 percent that is nothing in you are talking about barrells when it is not in percentages cause you are not talking about the different oil companies and 14000 gas stations in the united states bull shit for sure and fuck the oil people are dying over this shit for money we need to stand up and rise against and stop all of the murders but most of all this is for africa and the kids so realize that so many people are rich donate for something better fuck oil it is going to run out and what are you going to do then lets stop the talk and start doing…… with love for the world ..
michael nevis